CH 135

Hello, I’m Oihori Amato. A splendid corporate slave at the tender age of 28. Lover? What’s that? Is it edible? So yeah, not having a lover = age applies to me. Just a little bit longer and I’ll level up to a wizard…

Bah, gimme a break! Stuff like that doesn’t matter anyway! My lover is my company! …or used to be since I’m currently being jolted around in a carriage that’s driving through a world unfamiliar to me.

＊

On that day I staggered back home after finally, finally wrapping up all the revisions, finishing the tests, and releasing the program. As soon as it became bright despite me not having even turned on a light yet, my sleepiness and exhaustion was blown away all of a sudden since I found myself in some temple-like structure, just as I wondered what the deal was with all that light.

At first I thought I might be dreaming. Or rather, even now I still feel like I might be stuck in a dream.

“Braves, how admirable of you to have come here.”

When I heard that phrase you can find in countless light novels, I started to panic, thinking, 「Uh-oh, this isn’t good at all」. But, someone else had been summoned together with me. So I felt extremely relieved.

So, I followed the standard route of light novels, trying to turn them down by saying, “I don’t have any such abilities!”

…But, things were quickly proceeding on their own without me being even given much of a chance. Wait a sec! Don’t they usually say stuff like 「Very well, let us take a look at your stats with appraisal」 in a situation like this? But there was none of that!

And as things proceeded further, they told me I gotta go to defeat the demon king. That was the final straw for me and I cut in.

“Umm……two were summoned. That means one of us isn’t a brave, and so…”

The other guy – a middle school or senior high-school student, maybe? – was the kind of fellow with that very specific type of illness, seeing how his right hand was bandaged, so he very likely won’t turn down becoming a brave. Making that estimation, I tried to get out of here by using him as a scapegoat.

“Everyone called by the brave summoning circle is a brave,” I was told.

But! That’s wrong, isn’t it!? Look! That other guy looks totally pissed, doesn’t he?

“I’m more than enough as brave. An old dude like him will only drag me down!”

…Hey, just now you called me old dude, didn’t you fuckin’ brat!? is what I thought, but I’m a full-grown, peace-loving working adult! I’ll ignore his stab!

“Look, he’s saying so as well. Hahaha…I’m no brave, I tell you.”

I argued, but they didn’t listen. …Somehow a spear-wielding, cocky, burly guy in a shiny armor glared at me as if trying to stab me with his eyes, but when I still stressed that I’m no brave, the aide guy, who was next to the king and looked fairly capable, stepped forward and gave me an explanation.

According to him, they hadn’t summoned us. The magic circle called us over on its own accord! And after giving that brief rundown, he said they’d have us head out to subjugate the demon king! But, what’s with that dreamless and hopeless story!?

“As you might be troubled after being summoned without understanding anything, the royal castle will provide you the help you need. For the present, you can stay in the castle. After receiving a certain extent of training and us assigning companions to you, we will have you head out. We would love to stop that magic circle, but according to ancient documents, the entire kingdom will be visited by calamities if we try to cancel that old ceremony… We are terribly sorry, but we’d like you to defeat the demon king since the kingdom will offer you all its help.”

I’m finished. I’m definitely dead meat. Old ceremony means they’ve been doing this for a long time now, right? And yet the demon king hasn’t been defeated, has he? That kind of story……totally smells like them telling me to go and get myself killed.

The other guy is totally rejoicing, probably because he doesn’t get a thing.

“I’ll definitely bring down the demon king!” He prattled.

Rather, I might be jealous of his low intellect to not understand anything. For the time being, I guess I’ll pretend to go along with it and then run away.

“Excuse me, well, since we’re going to head to the demon king, could you give us some money? Also, doing it myself…”

“No? For the present, we will give you basic training in magic and swordsmanship. Even if you were to depart, you would not know left from right, correct? We will assign someone willing to defeat the demon king together with you, and have them act as your guide,” he said with a grin.

Ah, it got exposed that I’m trying to run away.

As I couldn’t help it, I attended their training sessions. The other brave seemed to be a bit of an idiot. Even I, whose ability to memorize stuff has dropped after graduating school, was somehow able to remember the spell chants, but he couldn’t get them into his head at all.

And, he’s quite dangerous. He was full of himself on top of having that middle-schooler syndrome. He was painful to look at as he continuously ran his mouth about nonsense. He pissed off people all over the place, always eager to pick a fight, apparently because he was awfully prideful on top of it all.

For me it’s impossible. Defeating the demon king together with such a nutcase is absolutely impossible!

“I already finished my basic training. Anyway, please spare me from fighting the demon king together with that guy! If not, could I have you go together with us? As a watchdog!”

When I directly appealed to the guy who didn’t let me run away, I received permission to head out first. And I immediately left.

I had only one companion with me. I didn’t know whether to feel grateful for them making it easy for me to escape or get anxious…

My companion was apparently called Mr. Rob. When I asked him whether there are any port towns since I’d like to warm up my skills a bit, arguing that marine life would be easier to kill, he looked dubiously at me, but still acknowledged.

＊

And then I met them at the port town Mr. Rob had taken me to.

Everyone was saying, “It’s hero 【Thunderclap Whitefang】!”, or, “Whoa, he’s so cool!”, but is that really true? Certainly, he looks like a fairly handsome man, but isn’t that nickname really devastating? Doesn’t he feel embarrassed?

Or rather, the heck’s a hero? If such a thing exists, wouldn’t it be just fine for that guy to go defeat the demon king?

When I asked Mr. Rob about the hero while wondering all that, Mr. Rob told me that he had repelled a dragon.

Not the demon king, but a dragon, huh…? Both sound impossible for me. But, between the two, the dragon…ah, that dragon almost turned the capital into ash, and as for the demon king…there’s still a chance I could win. I was told.

Okay, I see.